1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to devices for tracking and displaying the standings of teams in an organized league and more particularly, to a team""s standings marker or display. The team""s standings marker is a base with a number of small flagpoles supporting team emblem pennants.
2. Description of the Related Art
Every fan is an ardent advocate for his or her team with every fan seeking a way to exhibit his or her enthusiastic support for his or her favorite team. Public displays of team loyalty are commonplace. Sports fan are always looking for new and creative ways to express their devotion to a sport and to a team. The enthusiasm and excitement of following one""s favorite team during the course of a season has each fan anxiously awaiting the arrival of every new season.
The prior art describes a variety of devices for displaying the standings of sports teams. For example, U.S. Pat. No. Des. 366,798, issued on Feb. 6, 1996 to R. J. Messersmith, describes an ornamental design for a wall mounted board for a team display of baseball cards. An ornamental design for a data tracking display board is described in U.S. Pat. No. Des. 369,625, issued on May 7, 1996 to L. F. Nevels.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,949,506, issued on Apr. 13, 1976 to J. Benkowski, describes a plaque with repositionable ornamental team units. The ornamental team plaque is made of plastic and has a plurality of ornamental team unit members that are repositionably mounted on the face of the plastic body. The plurality of ornamental team unit members are positioned in a numerical sequence to designate team standing and a date indicator shows the time period for which the standings are valid.
A device and method for displaying a final gaming result is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,766,074, issued on Jun. 16, 1998 to L. Cannon, et al. In one embodiment, the device and method for displaying a final gaming result displays on a video monitor the winning results in a complete manner and all non-winning results in a faded manner. In an alternate embodiment, only the winning results of the game are displayed. The gaming device includes input devices, memory devices, and output devices, all of which are connected to a central processor.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,819,457, issued on Oct. 13, 1998 to R. J. Parker, describes a sports teams standing apparatus. A support is provided having a generally planar face surface on which a playing field for selected sport is demarked. Respective sets of attachment means, such as a hook members, are placed on loci spaced from one another on the face surface. For each attachment means a team designator is provided for removably mounting on respective attachment means.
None of the above inventions and patents, taken either singularly or in combination, is seen to describe the instant invention as claimed. Thus a standings marker solving the aforementioned problems is desired.
Accordingly, it is a principal object of the invention to provide a team standings marker or display that decoratively and clearly shows the league standings of teams in a league.
It is another object of the invention to provide a team standings marker that can be easily rearranged or modified to show changes in the standings of the teams.
It is a further object of the invention to provide a team standings marker that can be quickly and easily reduced in size to reflect the withdrawal of a team from the league or increased in size to reflect the addition a new team to the league.
Still another object of the invention is to provide a team standings marker that demonstratively shows the outcome or result of a game between two teams.
It is an object of the invention to provide improved elements and arrangements thereof for the purposes described which is inexpensive, dependable and fully effective in accomplishing its intended purposes.
The foregoing objectives are achieved in accordance with the present invention by providing a modular team standings marker or display that exhibits the standings of teams in an organized league or the outcome of a game between two teams in the league. The team standings marker of the present invention has a two tier base with an indicia bearing lower tier and a team pennant bearing upper tier. The team standings marker can be readily expanded to accommodate new expansion teams.
The team standings marker allows the sportsman to share in the glory when his favorite team wins. The team standings marker can be used to show the standings and the outcome of games for any type of team competition.
These and other objects of the present invention will become readily apparent upon further review of the following specification and drawings.